Reading Time: 4 minutes The world is losing it’s marbles with the corona virus going around so a lot of us find ourselves isolated at home. While this is certainly a good time to clean your home, I want to talk a bit about things you can do that you’ve probably been putting off (Mac related). Test your backups You use Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, ChronoSync and/or other ways to back up your data. This is great but do you know if those…
Reading Time: 3 minutes I have bundled these two apps together as they are from the same developer. They do very different thing though. CleanMyMac – Contrary to popular belief, this is not malware, scareware or any other maliciousware. People have gotten MacKeeper and CleanMyMac confused so many times over the years that they now both have a bad rep. CleanMyMac is solid and reliable software and the developer/company (MacPaw) has never done anything shady that I am aware of. Furthermore, CleanMyMac is notarized…
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s that time again. PowerPC (PPC) is being slammed by the unknowing. If I had the time I’d make a response video, like Greg Hrutkay has, and set the record straight on a few things. Sadly, I do not have the time to shoot and edit such a video so I’ll write this article instead. Now I won’t start hating on this guy. I don’t know him or his channel so I won’t judge him for being terribly misinformed. Why…
Reading Time: 3 minutes The PPC Challenge has been around for a while. I don’t know who started it or where but I’ve been participating for at least 5 years. The goal is simple; For one week, use a PPC Mac for as much as your daily computing as possible. Last year I used a 17″ 800MHz G4 iMac and I got a remarkable amount of my daily computing done on it. Updating and maintaining my websites with Photoshop 6 and Dreamweaver MX, AppleWorks…
Reading Time: 3 minutes This project is a work in progress but I thought I’d share what I have so far. I finally set out to map the capacitors in an MDD PSU so that we can see about recapping it. Currently on my desk is a Samsung PSCF401601B(C) Rev: A & Rev: B 360W power supply. This came from a FW800 MDD and is a revised model, Apple shipped the first MDD’s with a 400W power supply that ran hot and was super…
Reading Time: 8 minutes Two years ago I wrote a bit about my beginning in the board repair industry. You can read all about that here. It’s not a thrilling read by any means but I know it has helped a few people out over the years, so I figured it’s time for an update. I am proud to say that I have repaired hundreds of boards and thus have saved people a LOT of money. Repairs that would have costed people up to…
Reading Time: 6 minutes One day, your Mac will stop working or experience some kind of issue. This may happen suddenly without warning and when it does, you want a recovery and diagnostics drive handy. This drive has to be external and must match the interface your Mac(s) offer. For example a FireWire (FW) drive is not going to do you any good for a MacBook Air. A PPC will not allow you to boot from an external USB drive (even on the G5…
Reading Time: 5 minutes This question pops up every other week in the various facebook groups and forums I’m in. And I cringe every time I see it pop up. Why? because the comments are abundant and are typically full of misinformation. I can write a 10 page article about this but I will try to keep it brief. Here are a few of my issues with common comments: 1. Product recommendations “I use ClamXav”, “Avast has never let me down!” “McAffee is the…
Reading Time: 2 minutes If you want to give a Mac a good stress test to see if the core components are up to snuff, Prime95 is (one of) the ways to go. It includes something called the “Torture Test” and it is as brutal as it sounds. Core 2 Duo or Xeon, Prime95 will put it to work like nothing else. It’s not just the CPU that’s tested, it’s the L1/L2/L3 caches, north bridge, RAM and all that connects those components together. Letting…
Reading Time: 4 minutes This is the first in a series called “Tools I use”. The idea is to cover a different tool every week or whenever time allows or the mood strikes. Some of these tools you may know, others you may not. I do not use affiliate links and do not get kick backs from any of the developers I mention in this series so you can be sure that any mention and recommendation I make is based on good first hand…